


Khan Mulan

by imaginary_golux



Category: Mulan (1998)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-05
Updated: 2012-04-05
Packaged: 2017-11-03 01:48:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulan survives the avalanche, but the wrong people find her.  Written for the Disney Kink Meme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Khan Mulan

She comes up fighting. Wounded, half-crushed by snow and ice, half the size of any of the men who drag her from the snow, and fighting. Which is why they don’t kill her – of all things, the people of the steppes respect courage. They hit her over the head and take her away with them, back over the wall and into their own place, to return again when they have put together another army. This time, there will be no crazy little Chinese boy with a rocket to stop them.

She fights every time she wakes up, until Shan Yu himself crouches in front of her and says, in heavily-accented and imperfect Chinese, “Be still. We are leaving your country. You have won, little warrior.” Then she lies still across the back of the little steppe pony and pants against the pain of her wounds.

She lives, though it’s a near thing; by the time they get her to a healer, she is almost dead of blood loss. But she lives, and the healer does not tell Shan Yu she is a girl. He assumes Shan Yu already knows. Mulan goes out of his tent in Hunnish clothes and with her sword by her side, and glares defiance at everyone she sees.

When she is healed, Shan Yu comes to her with an offer: join his war-band, for loot and slaves and great honor. She refuses, insults him such that the only answer can be single combat. The others gather, circle them and place bets (only one man bets on little Fa Ping with his newly-healed side); Shan Yu is huge and glowering, and Fa Ping is tiny and shaking and about to be dead.

She wins. The kick that takes Shan Yu down is sung of for years, told across campfires for generations. Like a bolt of lightning, they say. Like the fury of the gods, like the strike of a hawk. Fa Ping is a great warrior indeed, say the people of the steppes. He should lead the next raid against the Chinese, over the Wall that taunts them so.

Fa Ping refuses. She will not lead a war-band. She will not fight her people. She stands firm, practicing her kicks and punches by herself far from camp, until the word comes from across the Wall, carried by traders and spies. There is a new emperor, and he is cruel.

Fa Zhou is dead. The bureaucrats found that he had sent a daughter to the army in place of an honorable son, in place of his own honorable death. He died by his own blade, they say, before his ancestors; thus to all who so dishonor China and their names. Fa Ping stands tall and furious before the spies, spits upon the ground and cries aloud in a voice like eagles, “I am his daughter, Fa Mulan! I will have my revenge!”

Any other woman, the Huns would slay for such a subterfuge. But this is Fa Ping, who defeated Shan Yu, who destroyed an army, who will never stop fighting.

They make her Khan.

Khan Mulan, they name her, and cheer her across the fires, and flock to her banner. Khan Mulan, they call her, and her second-in-command is the terrible Shan Yu, who has never been defeated by a man. Khan Mulan, they cry, and stitch black horse-heads on red flags, and tell stories of her horse, which follows her always, whisper that its name is a sign from the gods that she was always meant to rule.

When the time is right and she has ten thousand men under her banners (and fifty women, trained by her alone, deadly and beautiful as poisoned flowers, for her bodyguard), she returns to China. She comes at the head of an army who chant her name – her true name, her woman’s name – and fight like demons. She comes to avenge her father, and there are fifty cairns raised to his name, and each one built of the heads of armies she has slain. Her legend grows, and the Huns say that she kills men with a look, that her sword strikes down battalions, that her horse is a demon she tamed herself on the night of the dark of the moon.

She wins every battle, and in all but one, her men slay the entire opposing army. But that one – that is General Li Shang. He fights like ten demons, the Huns say, and though he loses, he pulls off a fighting retreat more astonishing than has been ever seen before. The Huns respect him. Khan Mulan herself declares that when she sits in the Imperial Throne, Li Shang will stand beside her, second only to herself and Shan Yu, her honored general. The Huns cheer the announcement. Courage above all.

She takes the Imperial City, of course. Slaughters the guards, kills the new emperor in front of the Imperial Throne with her own sword and sends his head, wrapped in the Imperial Robes, to her father’s house, to show she has avenged his death. She does not go herself – no one will welcome her.

And General Li Shang is brought before her.

He is a little battered – he resisted arrest, of course, but Khan Empress Mulan is on the Imperial Throne, and the people of China are smart enough to figure out that keeping Her Imperial Highness happy is a good life choice. He is still defiant, though, standing proud despite the chains and glaring directly at the woman seated on the Imperial Throne.

The glare is somewhat weakened by the gape he is also wearing.

Li Shang thought she was dead. He mourned her, quite sincerely, and burned incense to her every year on the anniversary of their great victory over the Huns, first burning it to Fa Ping (insane, brave boy) and then, when the news came out that she had been female, burning it, secretly, to Fa Mulan. Sometimes the other men joined him. Yao, now a bodyguard for a merchant, visited while the merchant wintered in town. Ling, married to a farm girl, stopped by when he brought his goods to market. Chien-Po owned a small, well-thought-of restaurant, and brought over a dish of noodles every anniversary, and sat and watched the incense burn, and wept.

But the woman on the Imperial Throne is quite distinctly the same woman he knew as Fa Ping. The face, the fearless gaze, the proud set to her shoulders – all the same.

Khan Empress Mulan needs a Consort. She will not raise another Emperor beside her – Shan Yu will settle for nothing less. And she will settle for no man less worthy than Shan Yu.

Or Li Shang.

He is not willing, in the beginning. She just conquered his country, after all, and he is a loyal servant to his country. But there are many arguments to sway him:

She is Empress now, and he should obey her.

She should marry a Chinese man, and not a Hun, certainly not Shan Yu. What would he do to the country?

She is beautiful and deadly as a masterwork sword.

He tried not to love her when she was Ping, and never quite succeeded.

If he refuses, he will die.

In the end, it is not fear of his own death that sways him – Li Shang does not fear death. It is not duty to his country, nor fear of the empress. It is not even her undeniable beauty. It is his memories of a shy, brave boy who fought like a young demon and never gave up, who gave his life for China and for Li Shang (for Fa Ping is dead – only Khan Mulan remains).

The wedding is marvelous: only the best for Khan Empress Mulan. The Huns have mostly retreated back to the steppes, laden with gold and jewels and silks, laughing and cheering for their Khan, but she has retained a mid-sized army and her bodyguards, and there is of course the promise that if she needs them, the Huns will come again. And Shan Yu has stayed behind, looming ominously beside the Imperial Throne. No one is inclined to rebel. Instead, they bring flowers and candles and stand vigil the night before the wedding, cheering their Empress, hoping she will understand that they are her obedient subjects.

Li Shang spends the night before his wedding in vigil, too, sitting in front of a small candle and hoping his ancestors understand. On the one hand, as the Empress’s Consort and the leader of her armies, he will be the highest-ranking member of the Li family since…well, ever, really. On the other hand, the Empress just conquered his country with an army of Huns. On the other other hand (he has run out of hands), the new Emperor had been a ruthless, stupid, and generally unpleasant man, and Khan Mulan is doing a rather better job than he had been.

And on their wedding night, he tells her she is beautiful, and brave, and the best fighter he has ever seen, and he has loved her since he learned she was female, and even a little before.

***

Khan Empress Mulan and her Consort live long and happy lives, and their children ride wild steppe ponies and fight like demons, girls and boys alike. And though when they go to their ancestors, the Huns retreat from China and the old enmity returns, still both sides remember a girl in boy’s clothing who feared nothing and would never stop fighting, and the man who loved her all her life.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Needful Empires](https://archiveofourown.org/works/487108) by [Interrobam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrobam/pseuds/Interrobam)
  * [[podfic] Khan Mulan](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6365887) by [imaginary_golux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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